There's one part of me that just wants to squee on the theme of the title of this blog. But what I love about Mills' work here is that he puts the brakes on the emotional reaction that's inspired by wanting to "own" this piece of history, and he walks the reader step by step through what these images do and don't mean. The biggest part of that is that they mean a lot more than simply "here is a picture of two women or two men making love." Because sex never exists in a social vacuum. One of the conundrums of medieval evidence for sex between women is that the actual simple act of genital contact was generally not considered of significance. But a great many associated behaviors and conditions could make that act either more or less transgressive than we might expect. So, for example, a woman who makes sexual advances to another woman might be viewed as acting "against nature" not necessarily because of the object of her desire, but due to having taken an assertive role in sex at all. That is, she might be seen as no less but no more transgressive than a woman who takes the sexual initiative with a man.
From the point of view of an author trying to create motivations and reactions for a historic character, it's vitally important to understand those differences. If a woman's confessor asks her "have you had sex in an unusual way" rather than "have you had sex with another woman", the difference in how she perceives her behavior will be significant. Among the few testimonies we have from pre-modern women accused of sodomy, several of them claimed that they didn't think what they were doing was a sin. That it couldn't be unnatural because they'd heard of other women doing it. Studies like this current book help flesh out that sort of difference of approach.
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